Skip to main content

Here’s how the InSight mission to Mars will confirm its landing to NASA

NASA’s InSight mission aims to send a lander to Mars to study the crust, mantle, and core of the red planet. Launched in May this year, InSight is now nearly at its destination and will soon be touching down on the surface of Mars.

NASA has shared details on how it will monitor the touching down of the lander at the end of its 91 million mile journey. The first tools it will use are radio telescopes, which can pick up simple radio signals. As the lander descends into the Mars atmosphere, it will send out radio signals that researchers back home at NASA can pick up. Two locations will be listening out for the signal: one at the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia and one at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy’s facility at Effelsberg, Germany. These radio signals cannot give data about what the lander finds, but they can be used to work out basic information like what at speed the lander is descending thanks to the Doppler effect in which the frequency of a sound wave is affected by the movement of the source relative to the observer.

Recommended Videos

More detailed information about the lander will be gathered using two small spacecraft called Mars Cube One (MarCO). The MarCOs are each about the size of a briefcase and are an experimental technology that should fly behind the InSight lander and relay data back to Earth in real-time. They may even be able to capture an image of the surface of Mars as soon as the lander touches down.

This animation depicts the MarCO CubeSats relaying data from NASA’s InSight lander as it enters the Martian atmosphere. Credit NASA/JPL-Caltech

In addition to the MarCOs, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft will also be nearby to record data about the InSight’s descent, although researchers will have to wait for the orbiter to disappear behind Mars and reappear on the other side before it can send back data. Finally, the 2001 Mars Odyssey, NASA’s oldest spacecraft at Mars, will also record data and images of InSight. Odyssey will pay particular attention to whether InSight has correctly deployed its solar arrays, which are especially important for the craft to collect solar power so it can perform its operations on Mars.

The landing is scheduled for November 26, 2018.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
NASA’s Mars rover just emerged from Jezero Crater. So, what next?
Perseverance's view from the rim of Mars' Jezero Crater

NASA personnel are celebrating the news that its Perseverance rover has finally reached the top of the Mars’ Jezero Crater rim after a challenging climb that took three-and-a-half months to complete.

The six-wheeled rover ascended 1,640 feet (500 meters) and made stops along the way to conduct various science observations as it continues its search for signs of ancient microbial life on the red planet.

Read more
NASA learns how the Ingenuity helicopter ended up crashing on Mars
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, right, stands near the apex of a sand ripple in an image taken by Perseverance on Feb. 24, 2024, about five weeks after the rotorcraft’s final flight. Part of one of Ingenuity’s rotor blades lies on the surface about 49 feet (15 meters) west of helicopter (at left in image).

Earlier this year, the NASA helicopter Ingenuity came to the end of its mission after an incredible 72 flights on Mars. The helicopter flew a remarkable 30 times farther than planned, and was the first rotocopter to fly on another planet, proving that exploring distant worlds from the air is possible. Now, NASA has revealed new details about what exactly caused the crash that brought the mission to an end, and what it learned about flying helicopters for future missions.

The final flight of Ingenuity took place on January 18, 2024, when the helicopter rose briefly into the air in a maneuver called a hop. The helicopter was fitted with a number of cameras, and shadows cast onto the planet's surface revealed that one of the helicopter's rotor blades was missing, having apparently separated at the mast. But it wasn't certain what had caused this damage.

Read more
Jupiter will be at its biggest and brightest this weekend. Here’s how to see it
An image of the planet Jupiter.

This weekend will bring a striking event for sky watchers, as Jupiter is will be at its biggest and brightest. This is a great opportunity to look up and see one of the brightest objects in the sky.

This is occurring because Jupiter will be in opposition on Saturday, December 7, which means that it is directly opposite from the sun as seen from Earth. This happens every 13 months. In addition, Jupiter is at its closest to Earth just one day earlier, on Friday, December 6. This happens because, although Earth and Jupiter both have orbits around the sun that are almost circular, they are not perfectly circular. Both orbits are slightly oval shaped, called elliptical, and in 2022, Jupiter came its closest to Earth in 70 years. This is still affecting the relative closeness of Jupiter and how big it is in the sky.

Read more